Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory

Culture of death

This gives you a peek inside a crematory but the author sprinkles in some history on the human relationship with our own mortality, the rituals supporting those and the evolution to where we are now. It has just enough ick factor to keep you entertained but I feel like i learned a lot and I wasn’t expecting that. Growing up with a dad who worked part time at a funeral home (and babysitting myself amongst the caskets and next to the embalming room while he worked a wake above) I hang on to an interest in where we go and what happens to us when we die. For me knowledge is power, and knowing the details however grotesque actually helps me not fear the inevitable end.

Fascinatingly gruesome! This is the kind of information I enjoy reading and learning about (the weirder the better). If you've watched episodes of Bones, you will probably not be grossed out... probably.

It's a quick read for most. However, I fell down the proverbial rabbit hole having to look up and research many of the people she mentions. I stopped for a couple of hours to read Mitford's The American Way of Death Revisited (only because I couldn't readily get my hands on the original book). Then I had to read all about the process of embalming, Dom Pedro of Portugal, 19th century Scottish murderers William Burke and William Hare, macabre photographer Joel-Peter Witkin, the Aokigahara Forest, Paul Gauguin, and the Salton Sea. Luckily, there's a list of resources at the end of the book for those of you who are just as curious.

A fantastic book! Very informative and an easy read, I didn't want to put it down.

i think one of the #1 recommended reads ever especially as a new adult grasping with the concepts of death and the real world

Chose this book on a whim for something to listen to while at work, found it funny how much I was familiar with the cremation/embalming processes explained in this book based on a mortuary assistant simulator video game I poured hours of my life into lmfao

There are many different elements to this book- historical tidbits about death, the memoir aspect which answers questions we are all thinking such as "what makes someone go into this field?" and "how does one stomach the nature of this job?", the many different things that can happen to a body when it decays, our cultural views of death, and the harmful societal perspectives of end of life care. Knocking a star because it was slower towards the end, but overall I had a good time and would recommend!